{"id":447,"date":"2019-03-31T14:00:52","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/?page_id=447"},"modified":"2019-05-06T23:01:01","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T23:01:01","slug":"plypno","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/about-2\/2019-2\/plypno\/","title":{"rendered":"Player Piano Restoration"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_zigzag el_border_width=”8″ css=”.vc_custom_1553988634650{margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Students<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][vc_single_image image=”1102″ img_size=”medium” css=”.vc_custom_1557183374945{margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Travis Vandewarker
\nELE, 2019[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][vc_single_image image=”1101″ img_size=”medium” css=”.vc_custom_1557183387417{margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Glenda Chen
\nCBE, 2020[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_zigzag el_border_width=”8″ css=”.vc_custom_1553988638130{margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Project Description<\/h3>\n

This project was unique in that it was a restoration rather than a new design. At the start of the project, the piano was playable, but unrestored. It showed clear signs of decades of unuse and deterioration. Most of the work done can be divided into two categories: the mechanical parts that would be present on any upright piano, and the pneumatic parts that are only present on self-playing pianos. The most immediate concern found was a few keys that stuck down after being pressed. After some inspection, it was discovered that several of the hammer return springs were pushed out of place and not working correctly. This likely happened during transportation at some point in the piano\u2019s life. This was fixed by carefully putting the springs back into place with needlenose pliers. The piano was also tuned, but this is an ongoing process, as its condition causes it to fall out of tune in a matter of days. On the pneumatic side, the tubing for automatic actuation of the sustain pedal was found to be unhooked and taped over. This was a more involved repair. All of the missing tubing was replaced, and brass fittings that had been broken were replaced and re-glued. A new gasket had to be made and fitted for the sustain pedal bellows.[\/vc_column_text][vc_zigzag el_border_width=”8″ css=”.vc_custom_1553988641874{margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Technical Background<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text]Player pianos were a widespread form of home entertainment in the 20th century. Still today, they are an impressive feat of engineering. When the pneumatics are off, the piano can be played manually just like a traditional upright piano, but the piano is also capable of \u201cplaying itself\u201d using a pneumatic system to actuate the keys. The music is read from a roll of paper with holes in it to indicate the position of notes to be played.
\nThe driving force behind the automated playing system is air suction, powered by either an electric motor or foot pedals[1]. When the lower treadles are pumped with the feet (or, in the case of the electric motor, when the suction pump is active), the exhaust bellows drive air out into the atmosphere, creating low pressure and therefore suction inside the pneumatics[2]. This lower mechanism is connected to the upper player action via a series of rubber tubes, so as to create a long, extended chamber of vacuum pressure. Leaks in the tubing are therefore the largest issue with player piano automated playing (supposing the mechanical aspects of the piano itself are intact); the vacuum pressure from the lower action sucks in air from the site of the leak rather than creating the necessary movement in the upper action.
\nThe upper pneumatic stack has one tube for each key; when a tube is covered by the paper roll (default state) it is silent, whereas when the tube is open to the outside, the air suction lifts a small bellows membrane to depress the key, triggering the hammer to strike the strings[3].
\nSome pianos, including the model in the EPICS lab, have an auto-sustain bellows in the lower corner of the bottom action. The manual sustain pedal allows string vibrations to ring out for an extended period of time by lifting the row of dampers. An auto-sustain hole in the player roll codes for the same thing: the tube to the auto-sustain bellows fills the bellows with air, pushing up on a rod which pushes up the dampers in the upper action[3].[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][1] Benner, Frank. \u201cHow Does a Player Piano Work?\u201d Technical Subjects, www.pianotopics.nl\/FT06v.htm. <\/em>
\n[2] McLaughlin, Ian. \u201cPlayer Piano – How It Works.\u201d The Player Piano Page, www.pianola.com\/ppworks.htm.<\/em>
\n[3] Tuttle, John A. Technical Articles about Player Pianos, www.player-care.com\/technicl.html.<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”283″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_zigzag color=”black” el_border_width=”8″ css=”.vc_custom_1553988646466{margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Design Drawings<\/h3>\n

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Fabrication Process<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

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This as more of a repair project than a fabrication project, but there were some small parts fabricated along the way. Our first concern was fixing the mechanical parts to make it play well as an ordinary piano, then to tackle repairing the self playing parts. The first step was cleaning the piano and identifying potential problems. The first repair involved keys that would stick down after being pressed. We found that there are springs meant to return the hammers after a key is struck that were out of place. The springs were probably jostled loose during transportation at some point in the piano\u2019s lifetime. We were able to put these springs back into place with needlenose pliers, and the keys don\u2019t stick any more. The next thing we tackled (that turned out to be the largest task of the first half) was tuning the piano. We used a tuning hammer and a tuned all 88 keys (about 230 individual strings). The piano sounded great after tuning, but fell a little out of tune after a few days. It is still much better than it was before starting, and we think it is falling back out of tune simply because of age and the tuning pegs aren\u2019t fitting as tightly in the tuning block as they did when it was new.<\/p>\n

The next steps were repairing pneumatic parts. Just cleaning and vacuuming out the ports in the tracker bar helped a lot with fixing the lack of suction in the system. Next we found that the mechanism to automatically press the sustain pedal was disconnected and broken. We ordered and replaced several vacuum lines and fittings to reattach the sustain bellows, then discovered that there was a leak in the unit. We then disassembled the sustain pedal bellows and replaced the gasket with one that we custom hand-cut. There was also a small leak in a leather bellow that was fixed with flexible player piano glue. Once these issues were fixed, we needed to replace a spring that returned the bellows to their resting state after they had been actuated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Final Result<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_media_grid grid_id=”vc_gid:1557183331262-56c83c78-5e2c-7″ include=”1108″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_video link=” https:\/\/youtu.be\/lPJDHboL8gM”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_zigzag el_border_width=”8″ css=”.vc_custom_1553988634650{margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column_text] Students [\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][vc_single_image image=”1102″ img_size=”medium” css=”.vc_custom_1557183374945{margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Travis Vandewarker ELE, 2019[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][vc_single_image image=”1101″ img_size=”medium” css=”.vc_custom_1557183387417{margin-bottom: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Glenda Chen CBE, 2020[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/6″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner… <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1379,"featured_media":1108,"parent":212,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1109,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/447\/revisions\/1109"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/epics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}